


Despoiled (the hunting for witches remix)

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Half-Sibling Incest, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-18
Updated: 2012-03-18
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:21:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Despoiled (the hunting for witches remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flammablehat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flammablehat/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Chastity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/252404) by [flammablehat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flammablehat/pseuds/flammablehat). 



> Thank you to my beta reader, fitz_y.

They are in a storeroom in the north tower, full of linen and scraps of things. No one ever comes in here. Well, Morgana amends, probably the servants do, sometimes.

"Yield?" she asks with a fierce grin.

Arthur garbles something incoherent, which Morgana correctly interprets as a complaint about the broomstick Morgana has jammed against his windpipe. She eases up on the pressure, only slightly, just enough for Arthur to pout and mutter, "Yield."

Morgana falls to her knees laughing, straddling Arthur's hips and pinning him down with her weight. Arthur's laughing too and putting up a token struggle, which doesn't matter because he _yielded._

Really, at almost sixteen Morgana is too old to be scuffling in the dust like a child even if Arthur is not. But she was the one who started the fight, she's been starting a lot of them lately. 

There are signs of the growth spurt Uther and Gaius have been promising Arthur for years; he's nearly as tall as Morgana now, and the three servings of every meal he eats seem to be clinging to his shoulders, chest, and thighs, rather than just disappearing into some bottomless pit. For the moment Morgana is still the taller and stronger, but already she can sense that her days of being able to knock Arthur down, make him laugh, make him admit that Morgana is best, are numbered. 

Morgana isn't ready for that to change, isn't ready for Arthur to change. She likes Arthur, likes him in a way that she likes almost no one else in Camelot; awkward, prattish, overly serious daddy's boy that he is. 

Morgana has been half-heartedly wrestling with Arthur, trying to pin his wrists above his head while he attempts to squirm out of her grip. She's leaning right over him, and maybe it's been slightly cruel of her to have spent the past six months trying to frighten him with her breasts, because suddenly she can feel something hard pressing against the inside of her thigh. 

Morgana's mind goes all fuzzy and white, refusing to make the connection between _Arthur_ and something hard pressing against her thigh.

"Is that--?"

"I-- I--" says Arthur, going redder than Morgana has ever seen before. And maybe laughing isn't the kindest response, because Arthur goes yet redder, twists out from under her and flees, the back of his neck flaming.

"Arthur, come back!" Morgana calls, breathless with laughter. "I'm not going to despoil you, I _promise_."

*

It's the funniest thing in the world to Morgana, until it isn't. Until she starts wondering what it would actually be like.

That's around the time when Morgana starts lulling herself to sleep at night by trailing her fingernails up the inside of her thighs and thinking of messy blond hair and red, red lips, starts touching herself through the fabric of her nightgown and imagining him beneath her, inside her, yielding to her. 

When she wakes later, screaming and bewildered, Arthur isn't there, no one is there.

*

They haven't fought for years, not like that. Morgana is the first lady of Camelot and beating people up with cleaning equipment is beneath her dignity. Anyway, Arthur, rather unfortunately, has stopped spitting plum stones into her hair and giving her the provocation. 

Now, they bicker. But it's still Morgana who starts it, every time. Arthur's knights have infected him with a particular sort of chivalry, which manifests itself in a stubborn refusal to treat Morgana as though she's entirely a real person.

Annoying him into forgetting himself is the only way she can get him to be normal, to be _Arthur_ , around her.

That's how it happens, the first time, with an argument turned silly, turned into another round of anything you can do I can do better. Only this time, instead of trying to fire Uther's crossbow blindfolded like when Morgana was twelve and Arthur ten, they tumble into Morgana's bed to the accompaniment of Morgana's victorious laughter and Arthur's bafflement at the lacings of Morgana's gown. 

Years later, Morgana will rankle at the memory that she had to goad, taunt, and finally dare Arthur to take her to bed.

Morgana knows that Arthur has filled out over the past few years, but she doesn't know _know_ until he's on top of her, filling each of her senses, and her entire world is Arthur.

In her mind he's always been the same wiry little boy he was back when Morgana's greatest source of amusement was trailing him around the castle grounds repeatedly whacking him with a wooden sword.

Arthur's given up on the lacings of her bodice and has hiked her skirts up around her hips with a growl of frustration. 

"Arthur, you are _useless_ ," Morgana laughs and makes to shove Arthur onto his back. She'll be on top, thank you very much. She is slightly horrified when there's no give at all, Arthur doesn't even seem to register her shove. 

Arthur will stop if Morgana asks him to, she has total faith in that.

But, still, the effortless ease with which he holds her down sickens her, makes her want to _bite_ people. At the same time the fact that it's Arthur doing the holding sends a bolt of _want_ straight between her legs.

The weight of him lessens as he slides down her body, pressing kisses to her abdomen and hip, whispering obscene idiocies against her skin.

Morgana's fingernails bite into Arthur's scalp, and she tugs at his shoulders. Up, _up_ , she thinks. She spreads her legs and says, "Arthur, I want to, please." 

And the thing is, she does. She wants Arthur in every way one person can have another, wants to tattoo "Property of the Lady Morgana" across his chest. And the fact that she can hear Uther's voice in her head shouting about why they shouldn't - why _she_ shouldn't - only makes her want it more.

Arthur pins her wrists to her sides, and Morgana's stomach gives another unpleasant lurch at how easy it is for him to restrain her. 

"No, Morgana."

To forestall the speech she can feel coming - the one Uther has drummed into both of their heads about honour, virtue and chastity - Morgana twists her hips furiously and says, "Well, do _something_."

Arthur grins wolfishly, dips his head, and presses his mouth to Morgana's cunt. She all but bucks off the bed in surprise and pleasure. 

*

It puts her on the conversational back foot with court ladies, but Morgana has no real interest in boys.

Arthur Pendragon is the only one who has this effect on her, and she dislikes him immensely for it.

*

It's not a romance, neither of them would call it that. And it's hard to conduct an affair when Arthur has such strong, and really rather odd, opinions on what will and will not compromise Morgana's virtue.

Also, that time they were nearly caught out by Gaius would have dampened even the most enthusiastic of teenaged ardors.

But it's something, something that Morgana can cling to.

*

They go hunting. They've hunted the woods around Camelot together since they were children so no one thinks this peculiar. 

Hunting in this case is a metaphor for groping up against a tree. Arthur's hands squeezing Morgana's arse, Morgana's hand trapped between their bodies, rubbing the bulge in Arthur's breeches as much as the limited space allows.

Arthur pulls back from her mouth to trail sloppy, wet kisses across her jaw to her ear. "Use your mouth," he pleads. "Come on, I did it for you."

Morgana smirks, ready to make a sarcastic comment about how she'd thought that was on Arthur's list of things that Morgana wasn't allowed to do when she is hit by a wave of dizziness and nausea so sudden that her knees buckle.

Suddenly she is back in a dream she'd had the previous night: Morgana is still on her knees before Arthur, but instead of looking excited and embarrassed, he looks angry and resigned, older too. Morgana tries to stand but two men in Pendragon livery are holding her down, and another forces her to bow her head. There is the scrape and swish of a sword being drawn, and Morgana tastes blood in her mouth.

When she comes back to herself Morgana thinks, it was just a dream. They are not true. They are _not._

She tries to shake it off, but when she looks up at Arthur all she can see is the face from her dream. And Arthur mistakes her look of fright for one of disgust. 

They return to Camelot hours early and in bitter silence. Better that Arthur should think she's repulsed by his cock and develop a lifetime's worth of sexual hang-ups than know she's started to dream of magic. She couldn't stand his fear and revulsion, it would kill her as surely as Uther would.

*

Shortly after that Merlin arrives in Camelot, and Morgana's world begins to crumble from underneath her.

*

When she discovers Arthur is her brother, half-brother, she is unmoved. 

The last several years have been one totally horrific revelation after another, this one doesn't even rate a mention. 

*

Morgana finds it surprisingly easy to hate Arthur, as easy as it once was to adore him. It's indifference that she never really gets the hang of.

*

As much as she hates him - and she does, she does, she _does_ \- she can never quite kill him. 

The only time she gets close her magic balks at the last moment and retreats back into some dark, _darker_ , corner of her mind. 

Was that the third or fourth time she took Camelot from him? No, it was the second, the time with Agravaine and the white dragon. Morgana wonders if the present and the future are getting muddled in her head again, confusing her anew, or if it's just that she no longer knows how to change paths, can't imagine any life but this one, miserable though it is.

It's after that particular disaster that Morgana regains consciousness, just for a moment, and finds Arthur sitting by the end of the bed holding onto her ankle; though whether to restrain or comfort her she can't quite say. 

"You're just a dream," she whispers.

"I'm not."

"--Could never have killed you, you know."

"I wish I could believe that."

When she wakes the second time she recognises her hovel. She must have crawled back here to die and failed at even that comparatively simple task. Arthur is next to her on the bed; his sword lies between them in a parody of chivalry, like a knight and maiden from a story.

Morgana looks around in a panic, half expecting Merlin, Gwen, and the knights to crash through the door at any moment. 

"I came alone," says Arthur. "I tracked you through the forest easily enough, you were crashing around like a herd of gryphons." 

"Why?" she asks.

"I want to make you an offer: leave Camelot, swear to me you'll never return, and I'll leave you alone. I don't want to have to kill you, Morgana."

Morgana laughs, a harsh, cruel sound that she barely recognises as laughter.

Arthur doesn't know anything of the trappings of destiny, of how cruel they can be. How could he possibly understand, this golden king whose every breath is blessed by fate? He has no idea - _none at all_ \- of the lives that have been destroyed on the altar of his great destiny. That's what makes it so easy to hate him, to blame him. 

It's perhaps mostly to stop the crazy laughter and only partly because it's easier than admitting that he still cares at all that Arthur kisses her, a collision of teeth and bone that leaves Morgana tasting blood.

 _Yes_ , she thinks, I knew it. 

This is the knowledge that Gwen and Merlin shy away from, that Arthur isn't special, that underneath he's just like Morgana.

Morgana's eyes flash a predatory amber and Arthur's sword flies from his hand and embeds itself, quivering, in the wall, Arthur is thrown backwards onto the bed. Morgana straddles his hips, scraping her teeth along his jaw, her mind white-hot with anger and bitterness. 

Arthur twists, trying to roll her underneath him, but Morgana feels the movement in her thighs and throws her weight the other way, keeping him beneath her.

Morgana survived ten years as a sorceress under the nose of Uther Pendragon, she's survived poisoning, betrayal, poverty, and unarmoured combat with the knights of Camelot; what will it take to make Arthur see that she is the strong one?

She can feel the length of him pressing hard into her thigh.

Dear, darling brother, she thinks, giving an experimental roll of her hips.

She hitches her skirt out of the way, and this time when she reaches for the laces of his breeches he doesn't try to stop her, his hands fisted in the bedclothes. 

Whatever honour Morgana may once have had is long gone, and it never had the slightest thing to do with what's between her legs. 

When Morgana sinks down onto Arthur's cock it _hurts_ ; she isn't ready, she's mistaken righteous anger for arousal, she's mistaken anger for all kinds of things. 

It reminds her a little of how she felt hearing of Uther's death, of lounging upon the throne of Camelot. It's the Goddess's little joke on Morgana, she grants her priestess whatever she wants, but only once she no longer wants it. 

It's not _fair_ , she thinks, and starts moving, riding Arthur. 

"I--" Arthur begins, and Morgana bites his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. There is nothing that Arthur can say that Morgana wants to hear, nothing that won't make it worse in one way or another. She grits her teeth and moves faster.

*

Later, when Arthur sleeps the sleep of the deeply enchanted, Morgana flees, this time taking care to leave no trail that any man could follow.


End file.
